Elfen Lied is one of the most hated animes of all time by many people, but I personally loved it. I will probably never watch it again. The fucked-up-o-meter is high, even by anime standards. Apparently the manga is even better/worse.

Same, it tends to get a lot of flack for using shock tactics--nudity, gore etc to lure people in. Personally I see it as an almost Shakespearean tragedy... The manga is terribly drawn but has more of an edge, in a way, as opposed to melodrama.

I just don't buy Elfen Lied's logic. Usually when you find a naked retarded girl on the beach, your first instinct is to call the police, not take her home (well, I'm sure some people would take her home, but the series leads us to believe the main characters are fine upstanding citizens). And then things just get too coincidental when it turns out the main guy and Lucy had crossed paths before, I'm sure mind-boggling coincidences like that have happened, but it's still hard to wrap your head around. A simple solution would be to imply that Nyu subconsciously went to the main character because of Lucy. But even if it had been about 10 years, don't you think the main character would have found her suspicious, you don't run into to many naturally pink-haired girls.

I don't know, maybe things are just different in Japan.

I still think it's an intriguing story that had much potential, but was overall poorly executed. I recognize suspension of disbelief, but when every other scene stretches it, it gets hard for me to be pulled into the story.

Very valid points. It's been a while since I've seen it, but my guess is that Kouta or the main guy didn't recognise Nyu/Lucy because he'd blocked out the past due to the trauma he suffered in his childhood.... I remember quite clearly it was explained he'd psychologically tricked himself into creating a mental block, and there are moments within the anime where he just reaches a blank, like when his cousin was trying to connect with him over childhood memories and he couldn't remember... and she had a little cry over it.

The Lucy-Kouta love story IS the basis though, it's not meant to be a coincidence, I thought it simply followed Lucy's life, and that after she'd been held in the cells for dodgy experimental science experiments she escaped to the only prefecture she knew---where the only person who'd shown her love was. That may be wrong though, I'm just going by memory.

I didn't feel there was much romance between Lucy/Nyu and Kouta, it felt more like just another sick harem fetish anime. I won't go into Kouta macking on his cousin for the first few episodes, since everyone dismisses that criticism as a part of my shallow American mind, but really the "romance" is nothing more than some poor writer taking an uninteresting, untalented, unmotivated guy (a reflection of himself, no doubt) and dropping two hot chicks in his lap who are constantly vying for his affection for no particular reason. It's really nothing else other than pathetic male nerd fantasy. It's something that has always bothered me about fantasy fiction, basically they're all telling you that you don't have to do anything but sit on your ass and get fatter cause some day an answer's just gonna fall smack dab in your lap.

I haven't seen the anime in about 3 years, but from what I remember, what goes on with Kouta and Lucy as far as romance is concerned, is all in the past. In fact, I remember her wanting to kill Kouta at first but eventually figures he's not so bad, she's just a bitch and goes for the heartfelt, last-minute "Sorry I killed your sister.". So basically their whole "romance" only serves as the first step in the twelve steps to recovery. The first few episodes seem to focus a lot on Kouta and his cousin's relationship, which is just... dropped. Like seriously, she goes from being a major character to an extra in the drop of a hat, instead focusing on Kouta and Nyu (which makes no romantic sense, since she's mentally handicapped and, even though it sounds mean, a healthy relationship with that would be nigh impossible).

My best guess for this is that when they were publishing the comic, the feedback was mostly from sad pathetic nerds who wanted to see the uninteresting guy (them) fuck the hot, aggressive, chick who doesn't understand the word consensual (their dream girl).

So it's kinda like what boo boo says about video games, because of the majority of fans are idiots, anime will never succeed as art. Except video games are kind of understandable since they're really expensive to produce and leave little margin for marketing error. Manga can't be THAT expensive to produce, so why do they continue listening to these pathetic fanboys who wouldn't know decent plot and character development if it punched them in the balls.

Last edited by that_guy on Sun Nov 21, 2010 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think everything western sucks, I just think we have enough fucking western games, and Japanese developers shouldn't be pressured to conform to the same boring generic style when they should stick to what makes their games stand out.

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